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Great Performers

If you went to the movies in 2006, a year when the box office was dominated by sequels, animation and the broken yellow VW bus from “Little Miss Sunshine,” it’s likely that what you remember is the performances.

It was not a standout year for filmmaking, but the acting in 2006 was consistently intriguing and often thrilling. In our annual photographic portfolio, the magazine has never tried to guess which actors will win awards but rather to praise performances that moved, distressed, enlivened and, finally, amazed us. We are saluting 22 of those remarkable characters: from Helen Mirren, whose subtly layered portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II both humanized a seemingly cold matriarch and revealed the complicated nature of duty in shifting times, to Sacha Baron Cohen, whose brilliant, seamless portrayal of Borat was simultaneously hilarious and shocking, to the lesser known Abbie Cornish, who was heartbreaking in “Somersault,” an Australian coming-of-age film that played in American theaters for only a few weeks. This was also the year that Penélope Cruz showed off her range as an actress in “Volver,” Forest Whitaker exploded as Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland” and Ivana Baquero, who is 12, deftly balanced the fantastical and the violent in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” And there’s more. The photographs that follow (each commissioned specially for this portfolio) celebrate what can be magical about movies: every great performance is a chance to be enthralled by another life that illuminates your own.